For Tytler, the threat posed by translation to the author’s transcendence is answered by liberal humanism, the contradiction between a general human nature and the individualist aesthetics embodied in the concept of “correct taste.” His explicit intention is to address “the subject of translation considered as an art, depending on {73} fixed principles” (Tytler 1978:4, my italics). The translator with “correct taste” is in fact an artist, an author: “none but a poet can translate a poet” (ibid.:208); “an ordinary translator sinks under the energy of his original; the man of genius frequently rises above it” (ibid.:42). And it is transparency that signifies the translator’s authorship in the text: the ease of originality occurs in “specimens of perfect translation, where the authors have entered with exquisite taste into the manner of their originals” (ibid.:142). The translator’s authorship hinges on a sympathetic identification with the foreign author—“to use a bold expression, [the translator] must adopt the very soul of his author, which must speak through his own organs” (ibid.:212)—but in the translation what gets expressed is less the foreign author’s “soul” than the translator’s: “With what superior taste has the translator heightened this simile, and exchanged the offending circumstance for a beauty”; “in such instances, the good taste of the translator invariably covers the defect of the original” (ibid.:89, 88). The anxiety that translation complicates authorial selfexpression by mediating the foreign text with “low” discourses is allayed by Tytler’s erasure of the distinction between translator and author, largely on the basis of an illusionistic effect of textuality, now the sign of “correct taste.”
Tytler (1747–1813), a Scottish lord who practiced law and pursued various historical, literary, and philosophical interests, published his treatise anonymously in 1791 and then issued two more editions, in 1797 and 1813, expanding the book to more than three times its initial size by adding many, many examples, driven by the empiricist conviction that they would make his concept of “taste” seem true, right, obvious. The treatise was very favorably received by reviewers and readers, confirming Tytler’s sense that he was addressing a public sphere of cultural consensus, even if that sphere was limited to a like-minded bourgeois literary elite.[11] The European Magazine, which announced itself as “a general Vehicle, by which the literati of the Whole Kingdom may converse with each other and communicate their Knowledge to the World,” concluded its review “with wonder at the variety of our Author’s reading, with praise of the justness of his judgment and the elegance of his taste” (European Magazine 1793:282). Tytler’s treatise prompted the Monthly Review to reflect on “the gradual progress of taste among our English writers” as evidenced in the rise of fluent translation (Monthly Review 1792:361). The anonymous reviewer asserted that “the author’s observations are, {74} for the most part, so evidently dictated by good sense, and so consonant to correct taste, as to admit of little dispute; and the examples, by which they are illustrated, are very judiciously selected and properly applied,” “sufficient to convince every reader of good taste, that the volume will repay the trouble of a diligent perusal of the whole” (ibid.:363, 366).
Although both of these reviewers expressed some doubts about Tytler’s recommendation that the translator edit or “improve” the foreign text, neither found this editing questionable because of the domestication it involved. On the contrary, the question was the specific nature of the domestication, with both offering reasons firmly grounded in domestic translation agendas. The reviewer for the Monthly Review suggested that Tytler’s “improvements” of the foreign text might interfere with the improvement of taste performed by translation, “the great end of which undoubtedly is to give the unlearned reader a correct idea of the merit of the original” (Monthly Review 1792:363). The reviewer for the European Magazine was less didactic but equally snobbish in his wish to preserve the classical text in a pure, unmediated state: “Such ornaments appear to us like modern gilding laid upon one of the finest statues of antiquity” (European Magazine 1792:188). This antiquarianism, although based on an idealized concept of the past, was actually serving contemporary social interests, labouring, somewhat contradictorily, under the valorization of transparent discourse in elite literary culture, recommending translations that seem to reproduce the foreign text perfectly: “the sober sense of criticism […] bids a translator to be the faithful mirror of his original” (ibid.:189).
Tytler’s importance in the canonization of fluent translation is perhaps most clearly indicated by George Campbell’s adherence to the same “principles” in his two-volume version of the Gospels. Campbell’s was undoubtedly one of the most popular English translations of its time: between 1789, when it was first issued, and 1834, fifteen editions appeared in Britain and the United States. The massive first volume contained Campbell’s “Preliminary Dissertations” on such issues as “The chief Things to be attended to in translating” (“Dissertation the Tenth,” 445–519). The closeness to Tytler’s recommendations is remarkable:
{75} The first thing, without doubt, which claims [the translator’s] attention, is to give a just representation of the sense of the original. This, it must be acknowledged, is the most essential of all. The second thing is, to convey into his version, as much as possible, in a consistency with the genius of the language which he writes, the author’s spirit and manner, and, if I may so express myself, the very character of his style. The third and last thing is, to take care, that the version have at least, so far the quality of an original performance, as to appear natural and easy, such as shall give no handle to the critic to charge the translator with applying words improperly, or in a meaning not warranted by use, or combining them in a way which renders the sense obscure, and the construction ungrammatical, or even harsh.
To recommend transparency as the most suitable discourse for the Gospels was indeed to canonize fluent translation. Tytler, who claimed not to know of Campbell’s work before publishing his own, made use of it in later editions of the Essay, drawing on the “Preliminary Dissertations” for additional examples and joining Campbell in rejecting translations that were either too literal or too free, that deviated too far from fluency and from dominant interpretations of the sacred text. “Dr Campbell has justly remarked, that the Hebrew is a simple tongue,” observed Tytler, agreeing with the Bible translator’s rejection of Sebastianus Castalio’s version for its “elegant Latinity,” for “substituting the complex and florid composition to the simple and unadorned” (Tytler 1978:111, 112). Campbell’s description of his own discursive strategy recommended fluency: “As to the Language, particularly of the version itself, simplicity, propriety, and perspicuity, are the principal qualities at which I have aimed. I have endeavoured to keep equally clear of the frippery of Arias, and the finery of Castalio” (Campbell 1789:xx). In Campbell’s view, Arias Montanus erred because his Latin version “appears to have been servilely literal,” offering obscure etymological renderings and “preserving uniformity, rendering the same word in the original, wherever it occurs, or however it is connected, by the same word in the version” without “attending to the scope of the author, as discovered by the context” (ibid.:449, 450, 451). Fluency requires the translator’s lexicon to be varied enough not to call attention to itself as a lexicon, to the artificiality of the {76} translation, or ultimately to the fact that the translator has created a target-language “context” to support his estimation of “the scope of the author.”
[11]
Alison describes the extremely favorable reception of Tytler’s treatise—“The different reviewers of the day, contended with each other in the earliness of their notice, and in the liberality of their praise”—concluding that “after the experience of fifteen years [and five editions], it may now be considered as one of the standard works of English criticism” (Alison 1818:28).